2017 ARP/Street Rodder Shades of the Past Road Tour Part 2

Visiting the NASCAR Hall of Fame and Museum and the Carolinas Aviation Museum

We continued our stock car racing history lesson on Sunday with a visit to the NASCAR Hall of Fame and Museum in downtown Charlotte. The building is an architectural masterpiece in its own right. Inside visitors find four floors of race cars, exhibits, interactive displays, and memorabilia that tell the amazing history of NASCAR. The stories of the men and women who made the sport so popular today are immortalized inside the massive structure. Racing fans could spend days inside, and after our short two-hour visit we all decided that a return trip would be time well spent.

After our visit at the NASCAR Museum we were joined by Brent Vandervort who is well known in our street rod hobby as owner of Fatman Fabrication in nearby Mint Hill. What many folks do not know is that Brent’s other passion is aviation and he sits on the board of the Carolinas Aviation Museum located at Charlotte International Airport. Brent joined us as we toured the museum and filled us in on the history of many of the planes and exhibits on display. The most recent addition to the museum is the actual airplane that was landed on the Hudson River by Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and copilot Jeff Skiles in what has become known as the “Miracle on the Hudson.”

It was a great second day on our Shades of the Past Road Tour to the Hot Rod Roundup in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.